We are currently in the beginning stages of the Google Summer of Code2013 program so to inspire you students out there we have a selection of short wrapup posts by four of our mentoring organizations discussing students’ highlights from the 2012 program.

Hedgewars

I am at a loss for words for what our Google Summer of Code students accomplished last summer with Hedgewars, a turn based strategy, artillery, action and comedy game. We started the summer off with a bang when we decided on five brilliant projects. We had a really hard time picking the best projects from some very good ideas that were submitted. We had some doubts about timing and the deliverability but we accepted the risk and provided safe snorkeling masks and air tubes before the students dove into the code.

Four projects were successfully completed and it's showcase time:◦Android netplay by Simeon MaxeinLots of GUI and API design involved with code portability issues and many days of protocol analysis, this will help unify our configuration handling across our many platforms.◦A new campaign by Szabolcs OrbànAn essential feature to have, coding skills as well as storyline write down, maybe it's the last milestone before 1.0.◦Video Output Tool by Stepan PodoskinReplay showcasting, with a neat YouTube uploader. A lot of new dependencies were added and it will be interesting to see how the community uses this.◦WebGL port by Meng XiangyunThe Pandora's Box of coding, with an eye-candy demo. There is still a long way to go before this task is done but the premise looks really exciting.

Any amount of words would not do enough justice to the passion and dedication brought by all people involved, students and mentors, for Google Summer of Code and Hedgewars. I am really glad that we were allowed to join such an exciting program and that we were able to meet amazing people in the course. Yay for open source, games and everything in between!

By Vittorio Giovara, Hedgewars Organization Administrator

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GNSS-SDR

GNSS-SDR is an open source Global Navigation Satellite Systems software defined receiver. Luis Esteve worked on the development of acquisition and tracking modules for Galileo satellites' signals. At the time the Google Summer of Code 2012 started, GNSS-SDR was a GPS-only software receiver. By the end of the summer, it was able to acquire and track real-life signals from the first two Galileo space vehicles already in orbit, and it is prepared for the whole constellation of 30 satellites expected by the end of this decade. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on a positive acquisition of a true Galileo signal by an open source software receiver. The resulting developments will help researchers around the world in the rapid prototyping of new hybrid GPS/Galileo receivers able to provide user's position with unforeseen levels of accuracy, reliability and coverage, taking full advantage of the just born European global navigation satellite system.

Participation of the OpenICC group in the Google Summer of Code 2012 program was a great success this year. All three projects reached their respective goals, below is a small summary:◦Colour Management for Krita PrintingJoseph Simon worked on adaptation and integration of his previous year’s implementation for colour managed printing into Krita/Linux. The workflow is based on ICC profile injection into PDF through the means of an OutputIntent.◦KWin Colour CorrectionCasian Andrei’s KWin changes for ICC style colour correction in the GPU are reviewed upstream and his new code to the KolorManager code base is awaiting approval. The concept follows the X Color Management spec. In contrast to the elder CompICC implementation the KWin result is highly modular and thus very flexible.◦Simple Toolkit AbstractionNitin Chadas’ SimpleUI project for rendering a subset of XForms was written from the ground up and provides new backends for FLTK, Gtk and Qt.Thanks to Google for providing the colour management and graphics community again a great chance to code and learn the open source way.

By Kai-Uwe Behrmann, OpenICC Organization Administrator

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biographer

biographer is a web-based visualization tool for biological networks that helps depict and analyze metabolic, signaling and regulatory networks in cells which is mandatory for the understanding of complex diseases including cancer. Our team was very excited to participate in the Google Summer of Code once again.

We chose three bright students from twenty excellent applicants. Our students came onboard with most of the necessary skills for their tasks which was very exciting. It turned out that they were also among the most active students in our forum during the application phase.

◦ A data storage and conversion layer was implemented by Duan Lian which enables us to connect to the graph notation language SBGN-ML. This interoperability is important in order to establish biographer as a new application for biologists.

◦ Taye Adeyemi improved the user interface with respect to graph manipulation, traversal and performance. Now graphs can be viewed and manipulated on mobile devices through touch gestures. Furthermore, the improved performance enables rendering of larger graphs which was a problem with the previous implementation.

◦ Chaitanya Talnikar implemented a Boolean simulator extension which enables us to analyze functional aspects of the networks.

To sum it up: this year's Google Summer of Code was again an exciting experience and helped to evolve our project.

By Thomas, Falko, Ben, Till, Matthias, on behalf of the biographer team

These are just four of the 180 organizations that participated in the 2012 Google Summer of Code program. We’re currently accepting organization applications from open source projects to be mentoring organizations in 2013. If your project is interested in applying, don’t delay! Applications close on March 29th.By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Team